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			<h1>An essay about Microsoft</h1>
			<p>Day 00654: Tuesday, 2016 December 20</p>
		</header>
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2016/12/20.jpg" alt="An empty lot near my house" class="weblog-header-image" width="809" height="480" />
<h2 id="general">General news</h2>
<p>
	One of the shift leaders emailed me this morning asking me to come into work today, but there was no way that I was going to agree to that.
	It&apos;s not that I want to get out of work, it&apos;s just that I have less than two days to complete a school essay that I&apos;m having particular trouble with.
	I started writing the essay before, only to find that I had to scrap the entire thing.
	Basically, I&apos;m starting from scratch now.
</p>
<p>
	My <a href="/a/canary.txt">canary</a> still sings the tune of freedom and transparency.
</p>
<h2 id="dreams">Dream journal</h2>
<p>
	I had a nightmare last night.
	I took a plane home, but I forgot all of my stuff at the place that I left.
	All my coursework, all my clothing, everything.
	I had to take another plane to go get it, but on the other end, I had to take a long walk to reach the motel that I&apos;d been staying at.
	I was in a panic because I didn&apos;t have time for this, I was already running out of time to complete my coursework.
	In addition to that, but teeth were breaking and falling out, which is the first time that I can remember my real-world dental problems making it into a dream.

</p>
<h2 id="university">University life</h2>
<p>
	My academic advisor wrote to me today reminding me that course registration had started for next term.
	Well this is embarrassing.
	I said that I&apos;d register as soon as registration opened up on the eighth, but I&apos;ve been scrambling to even keep up with everything, so I forgot.
	Worse still, when I tried to register for courses today, I found that registration is somehow closed, even though the academic calendar says that it should be open.
	I&apos;m confused as to what&apos;s going on, and wrote back to my academic advisor about the issue.
</p>
<p>
	I decided to do a quick Web search for Microsoft and corporate social responsibility, and while I personally find the results appalling, <del>it&apos;s not something that I feel that I can make an effective case against in less than two days.
	I might need at least a month to build up the facts.</del> Microsoft claims that their mission is to empower people, despite the fact that their actions show that they&apos;re actually disempowering people.
	Second, they claim to be trying to earn customers&apos; trust through principled decision-making.
	Really!? Microsoft has built a bunch of spyware into their latest operating systems.
	In most versions of the operating system, you can&apos;t turn it off.
	You have to have a developer version to disable some of the spyware.
	Then, if you <strong>*do*</strong> disable it, it also disables system updating.
	You can&apos;t update your Windows operating system without allowing Microsoft to spy on you.
	And this is an example of &quot;principled&quot; decision-making on Microsoft&apos;s part? Wow.
	Just wow.
	And in what way is that <strong>*empowerment*</strong>? I also think that I heard that some of the spyware in Windows is an outright key logger, but I might be thinking of some non-Windows system.
	Microsoft also claims to be safeguarding the future of the planet.
	Based on their other lies and deception, I&apos;d not be surprised if Microsoft was actually doing the opposite here as well, but I also wouldn&apos;t be too surprised if this was something that they were actually living up to.
	After all, keeping the planet alive and functioning keeps people alive and well so that they can potentially purchase products from Microsoft.
</p>
<p>
	<del>I obviously can&apos;t paint Microsoft in a positive light, because they&apos;re evil and need to be seen as such.
	I can&apos;t paint them in the negative light that they deserve because there simply isn&apos;t the time right now.
	I can&apos;t write my essay about someone who is actually one of the good guys, because the good guys tend to make social and environmental goals a part of their operational goals, so there&apos;s no struggle to keep operational goals and social/environmental goals in balance; in other words, the good guys don&apos;t fit the qualifications needed to function as a topic for this week&apos;s <span title="Principles of Business Management">BUS 1101</span> essay.
	I give up.
	I&apos;m emotionally divesting from this essay.</del>
</p>
<p>
	<del>Having given up on making this essay relate to my personal life, the path is much more clear.
	In another unit, we discussed the Coca-Cola corporation, which we discussed as being a multinational corporation that is taking measures to be at least somewhat environmentally friendly.
	Perfect.
	Clearly, their operational goals have nothing to do with the environment.
	They want to manufacture and sell massive quantities of beverage products and make boatloads of money.
	Their environmental goals are separate, and can therefore be a struggle to keep in balance with their operational goals.</del>
</p>
<p>
	Not only was I able to show what a problem Microsoft is, I was able to make it clear that they aren&apos;t the only problem.
	They are but one example of a problematic company in a corrupt industry.
	Most software corporations are built on the concept of customer abuse, Microsoft is just more prominent because of its large market share.
</p>
<p>
	<ins>Scratch that.
	I&apos;m going to try to make my case against Microsoft.
	It won&apos;t cover the full span of what all they do wrong, but I can still show that they maybe shouldn&apos;t be trusted by writing about one of their many major crimes against ethics.
	Besides, I really do prefer being able to write essays about topics that I actually care about when the topics are flexible enough to allow that.
	I think that the university prefers that too.
	They seem to feel that students learn more when they can connect the learning with their actual lives.
	It wouldn&apos;t surprise me if they were right, either.
	The human mind is kind of strange, and sometimes won&apos;t hold onto information if it deems the information to be pointless.</ins>
</p>
<p>
	After doing the research that I needed for my essay, I sort of slacked off a bit.
	I should have completed my <a href="/en/coursework/BUS1101/Microsoft_and_corporate_social_responsibility.xhtml">essay</a> for the week, but I needed a break.
	Now that I know that my essay topic is viable though, and now that I have most if not all of the outside information that I&apos;ll need, I think that I have the time to rest for a bit.
</p>
<p>
	Before going to bed though, I finished my discussion assignment for the week:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Your entire post talks about &quot;organizations like yours&quot; as if you&apos;re talking to us about about an organization that we actually have.
	It&apos;s a bit confusing.
</p>
<p>
	I agree that when your employees actually understand their work, they&apos;re much more likely to connect to it.
	After all, it&apos;s hard to relate to something when you can&apos;t figure out what it is.
	Is it possible for someone to become more quick-witted though? More proficient, sure, but I think that quick-wittedness is something that you either have or don&apos;t have.
</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="apartment">Apartment hunting</h2>
<p>
	Someone telephoned me today, so I got my hopes up that it was someone calling about an apartment opening.
	Apartment managers are the only people that I&apos;ve directly given that number out to, though it&apos;s also on my contact page of this website.
	Unfortunately, it was just a wrong number.
	The call lasted less than ten seconds, but it ate up a full minute of my calling time.
	If I ever called anyone, I might be frustrated by this.
	Hopefully incoming calls meet the at-least-one-call-per-month requirement, because I&apos;ve been trying to find time to make a call to customer support (just to meet the requirement) since the first of the month and I never actually get that done.
	I hate talking on the telephone.
</p>
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